


testament of youth

by curt



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hospitals, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Injuries, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-21 08:26:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17040272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/curt/pseuds/curt
Summary: Tommy and Alfie meet during their own minor interlude from the war, before it can take its toll on them.





	testament of youth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [high_hopes8](https://archiveofourown.org/users/high_hopes8/gifts).



There had been a man in Tommy’s ward that wouldn’t quiet down.

He talked incessantly. About what he saw and had seen, how he felt and would like to feel, what he thought, especially. From what Tommy had been able to conclude, the man’s ailment lied not in whatever stray bullet or similar shrapnel that had waylaid him, but in a chronic, incurable ability to stop from running his bloody gob ragged. 

It drove Tommy right to the edge of madness.

Even the most sociable amongst them had struggled to handle the man for more than a few days. He was shifted from bed to bed, down along the rows until, finally, they laid him down next to Tommy. 

If there had been one thing Tommy always been able to be counted on for, it was his resistance to those things that so easily felled other men. It was for this reason that he resolved within himself not to break, as all the man’s other neighbours had.

He made an honest go of it. A good go, if he were allowed to judge such a thing himself. But ten hours past and Tommy hadn’t been able to lay in silence any longer, could not allow himself to let the utter shite he’d been subjected to stand for another Godforsaken moment. 

“They’ll hang you for speaking like that,” is what Tommy had said. Where the Huns and the best of their men had failed in breaking his spirit, this man, his own countryman, had succeeded. 

Out of the corner of his eye, Tommy chanced a glance at him, and he hadn’t bothered to bite back his frown when he’d spotted the amusement settle across the man’s face. 

“What’s that?” he’d asked Tommy. When met with silence, he’d returned to speaking mostly to himself, though now that he’d known he had an audience in Tommy, he seemed much more engaged. “Feared you were mute there for a while, lad,” he’d said. “Or worse: deaf.”

Tommy continued with his unamused expression and stayed quiet. 

“Well, to answer the implications of your earlier statement, yes, I am aware. But what can I say, sweetheart, these lips are good for more just than talking.” He’d run his eyes up and down Tommy’s prone form, spread across his bed, eyes lingering over hospital-mandated pajamas that the man himself had also been dressed, and the pathetic-looking sling that cradled Tommy’s arm close to his chest as it healed. 

A clean break, nothing left in him at the end of the day. He had a few weeks left stuck in this place before he’d be well enough that he’d be allowed to get back to the front with his men and the job he’s been brought out to do for King and Country. 

“Although,” the man had said, continuing his monologue. It seemed that he had been forced into the same waiting game as Tommy himself had been, although his injury had been taken in the leg. “You lot keep it intact down there, don’t you? I’ll be expecting you to bathe if you want to have any hope of being with me. I’ve not got expirence in goys.”

It had been enough of a non-sequitur that it caught Tommy before he could quite rein himself back in. “Intact?” Tommy asked, knowing instantly that he’d made a grave tactical error but that hadn’t mean that he was any more able to turn back the hands of time to save himself. 

Not that he’d waste such a thing on this particular conversation. Probably would try his hand at saving that Archduke and preventing this whole sorted mess, wouldn’t he?

“What have you done to yourself, you onanist?” Tommy finished.

The man stared at him, deathly still for a moment, and Tommy had a rather lackadaisical notion that perhaps the man had been the sort to serve it out with the best of them, but had a rather hard time accepting what was put onto his own plate. 

Tommy needn’t have worried. The man smiled after a moment, slow and wide. “Solomons is my name, gyppo.” 

Whatever mild humor that had bred itself inside of Tommy at the absurdity of their exchange bled right out of him. “That’ll be Shelby to you,” he said. “Thanks.”

If anything, the man had become more enthused. 

“Aw,” he’d whined. “Come now, don’t sour on me yet. Not when I’m only teasing, just. I’ve taken a liking to you, can’t you tell?”

There was a sincerity there, which had Tommy almost wanting to laugh. Mostly at himself, because despite it all, he’d started to like Solomons himself. 

“I fear your attentions will get me sent straight to the gallows to hang beside you,” Tommy had said.

It had only made Solomons laugh some more. “If we do it right,” he’d agreed, “sure.”

x x x

They’d been able to shower once a week, water rationed for the those not in critical condition, so close to the front as they were. 

Solomons eyed Tommy up from across the bathing room. He hadn’t made a spectacle of himself in doing so, but he hadn’t bothered hiding it either, which was just as bad. The rest of the men took it as a joke, laughing at Solomons and calling him a nancy without real heat in their voices.

Tommy couldn’t treat him with such a cavalier disposition. He knew vehemence when faced with it, and there it had been in Solomons’ eyes as he looked at Tommy. 

“What game are you playing at?” Tommy asked, as Solomons took the faucet nearest Tommy’s. The man had done a full circuit around the cramped bathing area, seeming to take Tommy in from each angle before he’d dared to come up close at last. 

He hadn’t bothered to lower his voice, and that seemed to be a mistake.

“Aw, don’t be that way, Shelby,” Barrow had said, rinsing himself off on Tommy’s other side. “Give a man some hope, will you? Let Solomons wash your back or sommthin’. Let him have a nice memory to take back with him to the front.”

Laughter echoed around them. Solomons’ eye caught Tommy’s.

“Alright,” Tommy allowed. “Have at it then.”

The men hooted as Solomons grabbed a piece of soap from the shelf in front of them and made quick work of lathering up Tommy’s back.

“You know,” Solomons said, and he’d had enough sense to keep his voice low so that it wouldn’t carry over the rush of the water, the boisterous noise of the men as they picked their conversations up again, Tommy and Solomons forgotten now that they failed to show any semblance of shame, uninteresting as a result. It was only fun to harass someone if they actually minded the harassing, after all. “That thing of yours,” he nodded his head down between Tommy’s legs, and if had Tommy blushed then, he’d have the steam of the water to blame it on. “It isn’t half as ugly as I’d imagined.”

Tommy wondered Solomons half-expected him to say thank you for the compliment, such as it had been.

x x x

There were places where men could disappear off to in hospital, if they were of a mind to do so. 

Solomons had gotten quite good with his crutches, and Tommy’s legs had always worked just fine. Off in a darkened corner like they were, they could pretend that their desperation had everything to do with the fact that they might very well have died in the near future, and not that it would be their own countrymen sentencing them to such a fate, should they be the ones to catch them.

“You’re ridiculous,” Tommy had said, half-gasped words spoken on a whisper between kisses pressed to his lips, his cheeks and chin. “How can you do this? Risk this?”

As if he hadn’t been doing the same. At least he wasn’t so bloody obvious about it. Though, seeing as he’d tossed his lot in with Solomons, perhaps he was.

Solomons had shaken his head, hid the softness of his laugh in Tommy’s mouth. “Nobody believes me. The Jew that can’t shut his yap? I’m a laugh-fucking-riot. I could fuck you right there, in front of all the gentleman officers themselves, and they’d think I was just having them on. There’s advantages in playing into what they think about us, Shelby.”

“What?” Tommy had asked. “Sodomites?” 

“A cast-off,” Solomons explained. “They’ve been trying to rid themselves of our sorts for ages, but they haven’t managed yet. When they don’t think much of you to begin with, there’s wonders to be done.”

Later, when Tommy had seen and lived through the worst of the war, and most especially when he had been in the thick of it, long after he’d lost track of the likes of Alfie Solomons, the two of them sent back to battlements on opposing fronts, _that_ had been the moment between them that stood clear in his mind. It served as a knowing hand at his spine, stiff in the face of it all, that kept him going. 

The thought that he came from a stock that even time itself hadn’t managed to stamp out, even though it certainly tried. 

Civilizations might rise and fall, but still Thomas Shelby stood, changes and all.

x x x

The first thing that comes to Tommy’s mind, after he’s walked into a Jewish bakery in Camden Town and hears a loud voice that can only belong to the sort of man that loves to hear himself speak, is that the war has changed Alfie Solomons’ personality far less than it had Tommy's. Though his physical wounds seem to be far more impactful, if Solomons’ gait is any indication. 

The second is that, contrary to what he’d assumed to be true at the time, it would appear that not a single word that had crossed Solomon’s lips in a convalescent home, nearly a lifetime ago, has at all turned out to be a lie.


End file.
